THE deliberate international disinformation by African Confidential and Bloomberg is aimed at making Zambia’s assets lose value so that vultures can come and buy them at a less value, says former Finance minister Katele Kalumba.

Dr Kalumba said in an interview yesterday the current scheme was similar to the situations in the past where Zambia’s assets were privatised cheaply.

He said doomsayers, whom he described as vultures, would scramble for Zambia’s assets after their value had deteriorated because of disinformation.

Dr Kalumba, who was a minister of Finance in the Fredrick Chiluba administration, said the doomsayers wanted to create confusion to disrupt Zambia’s relations with China.

He said international disinformation should not derail Zambia’s commitment to its development goals.

Dr Kalumba said Zambia had become a target of disinformation merely for its engagement with China, but warned the schemers to back off.

“Their war is with China. They want to create strawmen arguments to dislodge Zambia’s relations with China,” Dr Kalumba said.

He, however, said Zambians were too smart to be consumers of ‘gonzo news’ coming from compromised media houses in the West’s attempt to maintain economic hegemony in Africa.

And Economics Association of Zambia (EAZ) president Lubinda Haabazoka says the recent trend has seen Zambia being quoted on the negatives.

Dr Haabazoka said the recent article in Bloomberg used data on Zambian bonds to insinuate that a crisis was looming.

He said the publication rightly pointed out that Zambia’s bonds had an inverted yield curve.
When that happened, Dr Haabazoka explained, it meant investors anticipated a down-turn in the economic development of a country.

He, however, said what that particular article had left out was that in the same period, the United States of America (USA) also experienced an inverted yield curve.

Dr Haabazoka said many other countries experienced an inverted yield curve but there was no fuss in the foreign publication.